No Glory in Practice
by SigmaTheta
Summary: The superstar Psychonauts before they were quite so super. (Written for Yuletide 2016.)


Blood was trickling down from the cut on Sasha's forehead, and he dabbed gently at it with his sleeve before any could drip into his eye. He'd tried to stop the bleeding once already, pressing the heel of his hand firmly against the laceration, but the sudden, sharp pain he had felt made him suspect there was still a shard of glass embedded in the wound. He might have been able to remove it if he had the use of both of his hands, but the security guard had cuffed one to the leg of the workbench Sasha was leaning against. He supposed these were all fairly natural consequences when one accidentally and explosively destroyed an entire day's production at the glassworks factory.

Sasha had always managed to run before, when he'd had incidents like this. He'd been running for years, and he was good at it. He had always kept ahead of the fallout and found ways to get by. Now he'd finally been caught, and all he could do was sit and wait for someone to collect him.

The man who eventually entered the room did not look like a police officer. He seemed too old and almost frail, with grey hair going white and a slightly hunched over stance as he slowly walked forward. His eyes betrayed a sharp intelligence, though, and the look he fixed Sasha with made him sit up straight and tug again, fruitlessly, at his cuffed wrist.

The man stared at him for a few seconds longer, then moved on to take in the wreckage of the factory, the shattered glass and twisted metal littering the floor around them. He looked back at Sasha and grinned. "Well now, son," he said, with casual friendliness, "looks like you've made quite a mess in here."

* * *

The woman was young, maybe a little younger than Sasha, and she was probably quite striking under better circumstances. Right now she was doing her best to appear otherwise, curled up in the corner in an ill-fitting hospital gown, her eyes clenched shut and her bandaged hands pressed to her ears, blocking much of her face.

Sasha wasn't really sure what else he was supposed be seeing beyond that.

Agent Cruller snorted beside him. "Are you a PSI Cadet or not?" he asked. "Look with your mind, not your eyes."

Sasha frowned. He _wasn't_ a PSI Cadet, not technically. He was still receiving his training on a probationary basis, and he hadn't yet been cleared to participate in any kind of field exercise, let alone an actual recruitment mission. But when the Psychonauts' top agent interrupted your mandatory therapy session and said you were coming to Brazil, no one was really going to argue. He turned back toward the window into the observation room and closed his eyes. Very carefully, keeping a tight grip on his control, he stretched out the edges of his mental field to brush lightly against the surface of the woman's consciousness.

The walls went up so fast it made Sasha flinch, a steel door slamming shut against his probing mind. The connection broke instantly, and he opened his eyes and rubbed gingerly at his temples. "Strong defenses," he muttered.

"Yes, indeed!" Cruller said, cackling at Sasha's attempt. "There's a lot of power there, although I don't think she even realizes what she's doing yet. She was brought in for smoke inhalation and second-degree burns, but the doctors almost couldn't treat her. She kept throwing up shields subconsciously. Of course, that's when she fell on our radar."

Sasha considered the young woman again with this new information in mind. Between her obvious distress and the nature of her injuries… "Did she start the fire?" he asked quietly. He knew quite well, from both second-hand accounts and first-hand experience, that untrained psychics tended to manifest their powers in very sudden and very violent ways. Scanning the news for unexplained disasters had long been one of the Psychonauts' best recruiting methods.

Cruller shook his head. "Doesn't seem that way. Witnesses put her in town shopping when the fire started, nowhere near the building in question. Seems to have just been a very unfortunate accident." His voice became solemn on these last words, and Sasha wondered how many others had been harmed in the fire.

Then he frowned as the contradiction clicked in his mind. "If she wasn't anywhere near it, then how did she get burned?"

"Now, that's the real question, isn't it?" He gave Sasha a brief grin and then entered the observation room, pulling the door gently closed behind him before approaching the woman.

Sasha, perplexed, moved closer to the window to watch what would happen. Agent Cruller was odd – even those who held him in the highest esteem knew this – but he never did anything without reason. Surely Sasha was meant to learn something from this, or he wouldn't have been pulled from his regular training.

Cruller crouched down beside the woman and slowly reached out his hand until it met resistance, her subconscious shield briefly visible as a spark of flickering, purple light at his fingertips. He closed his eyes, brow furrowed, and a pulse of green light emitted from his hand and rippled across the surface of the shield, dissipating it. Cruller's hand continued forward, unimpeded, to gently touch the woman's shoulder. She opened her eyes slowly, and Cruller began to talk.

Sasha had had some lessons in clairvoyance, and he believed he probably had a firm enough grasp of the skill to jump into Cruller's mind for a few moments and listen in on some of the conversation. But the thought of anyone, even a fellow recruit in similarly unhappy circumstances, eavesdropping back when Cruller had first found _him_ made him feel damn near physically ill, so he refrained. Besides, the words themselves seemed less important than their effects, and Sasha watched as the distraught woman slowly pulled her hands from her face, then uncurled from the wall, relaxing more and more as Cruller spoke to her.

The conversation lasted for quite a while, but whatever was said evidently had its intended effect, as Sasha was soon sitting awkwardly beside the woman – Milla Vodello, he finally learned – in the hospital waiting room while Cruller pulled whatever Psychonauts-related strings he needed to pull to finalize her release. She fidgeted slightly in her seat, rubbing at the edges of her bandages and sometimes flinching when nurses and patients walked by, putting a hand to her forehead as though fighting off a headache.

Sasha sympathized. Non-psychics couldn't block their surface thoughts and emotions from leaking out into the world, and it took some time to learn how to avoid reading every unshielded mind that passed too close. He still struggled with it sometimes, often reading more than he wanted to even when intentionally probing for information. "You'll learn how to handle that, in time," he offered in a mumble, staring down at the floor.

She looked up, blinking at him as though she had forgotten he was there. Maybe she had, with the cacophony of new voices hounding her. She tilted her head thoughtfully. "You are a…a Psychonaut, too?" she asked.

Sasha cleared his throat, eyes still fixed downward. "I'm in training," he said.

"It's good training? It will help?"

Sasha looked up at this. Vodello's voice was thickly accented and still raspy from the smoke, but he could hear the pleading tone quite clearly. He looked into eyes that were wide and hopeful. "Yes," he said, nodding, "it helps."

She gave him the smallest of smiles, but it was enough to prove his earlier theory of how she would appear in better circumstances. She let out a sigh, and her shoulders relaxed. "I'm glad."

* * *

There was a wall made of fire deep within Milla Vodello's mental world, thick ropes of flickering flame crisscrossing at odd angles and blocking off the entrance to a long, dark corridor.

This was the first time Sasha had encountered it, though he'd been inside her mind several times before as he was often paired with her during training. Psychonauts recruiting efforts didn't tend to lead to very large class sizes, and despite starting a fair bit later than him, Vodello had caught up to Sasha's level of progress very quickly. She had passed through preliminary testing and mandatory therapy in half the time it took him, and she was sitting beside him in most of their PSI Cadet classes soon after.

("Because she's not as destructive as you, Nein," the head instructor had explained once when he'd brought the question up. "She's got her issues just like everybody else in this damn place, but the worst she's likely to do is throw up a few shields or start levitating in her sleep. The last time _you_ lost focus, you blew the wing off a jet." Sasha had been indefinitely banned from all field exercises that required long distance travel after that incident, something he still felt was an overreaction. The jet hadn't even been in the air at the time.)

Today's training session involved a simulated information retrieval mission, so they were required to delve much deeper than they ever had before. The normally obnoxiously bright colors of Vodello's mind were muted down here, the pounding dance music muffled to his ears. Sasha reached out toward the fiery wall, his hand moving almost of its own volition, and stopped just short of touching one of its glowing strands. There was no heat that he could feel, nothing radiating up from the apparently scorching surface. He moved a little closer.

Vodello's voice broke in suddenly, ringing all around him. "Darling, I can tell you right now that is not the right way," she said, and there was an unusual edge to her voice, something forceful and urgent.

It was enough to jolt him back to himself. He jerked his hand away from the flaming barrier and frowned down at it, bothered enough by his briefly trancelike state that he did not even protest Vodello's use of yet another of her overly familiar endearments. "What is this?" he asked.

"It's nothing, darling, nothing. Shall we get back to the mission?"

The floor shifted slightly beneath his feet, a not-so-subtle encouragement to be on his way, and Sasha stumbled a few steps away from the wall. He hesitated there for a moment, peering into the darkness beyond the fire, so different from the light and color found everywhere else. As fully-fledged Psychonauts, they would be expected to pry into every corner of a target mind and ruthlessly uncover any secrets hidden within, but a fellow agent surely deserved some degree of privacy.

Sasha turned around and walked away. Behind him, just barely loud enough to hear, came an ugly, hissing whisper of a voice: _"Why did you let us die?"_

He never heard that voice again, though he did stumble across the fiery corridor a few more times as their training continued, and Vodello never mentioned either one outside the confines of her mind. She continued on as before, smiling and cheerful and always chatting too comfortably with him in the hallways.

The curiosity prickled insistently at him until he finally asked the question, the words spilling forth almost against his will during one of these chats. "What happened in the fire?"

Vodello stopped short to look at him, a rare frown creasing her features. Then she smiled calmly and said, "What happened in the factory?"

He flinched and looked away, appropriately chastened, and mumbled an apology under his breath. It was a clear and sharp reminder: probing through the mental world was not a one-way street when it came to other psychics. He would do well to remember that, if he hoped to succeed as an agent.

* * *

Psychonauts field teams were decided largely by trial and error. The more experienced agents observed the cadets in training and then put them together in what seemed like promising combinations, threw them into a few low-risk missions, and hoped that something would eventually stick. It rarely took more than a handful of assignments to know if a partnership was going to work out.

This was Sasha's third such assignment with Agent Vodello, and much to his surprise, it seemed to be working out. Their particular talents balanced each other well, and they were learning to cope with the differences that remained. Sasha no longer cringed at the sight of Vodello's tacky, colorful mental landscapes, and she no longer made pitying faces at his more monochrome internal workings. This mission was a simple surveillance job – a few former agents were finding and training young psychics, and the Psychonauts wanted to know why – and it showed every sign of proceeding just as smoothly as the previous two.

Sasha pulled his consciousness back from the crow conveniently perched just outside the training compound, checked his watch, and leaned back comfortably against the nearest tree trunk. He and Vodello would check in with headquarters after another few hours of monitoring, and then they would have another successful mission on their record. He let his eyes close. Sasha was already beginning to look ahead, wondering just how far they could go working together like this.

Their newfound synchronicity meant that Sasha knew the instant something began to go wrong. It started small, a twinge of unexplained uneasiness at the back of his mind, but it grew rapidly and insistently until he was feeling Vodello's fear and panic flaring through his brain as clearly as if the emotions were his own. He was already running by the time he heard the scream.

She was on the ground when he found her, eyes closed, hands pressed to her ears. Above her loomed a living shadow, deep violet but for eyes glowing like fire, reaching toward her with long, clawed limbs. It spoke in a low, harsh whisper, _"Why won't you help us?"_

Sasha reacted without thinking. He brought a steadying hand up to his head, gritted his teeth, and released a wave of energy, unfocused and unrestrained. Crackling blue light engulfed the shadow, dissipating it instantly and leaving no visible trace of its presence. But it died with a ringing, rasping wail, the sound echoing within Sasha's skull and sending tremors down his spine.

Sasha had seen Nightmares before, but they were always small, scuttling creatures hiding in the dark corners of a conscious mind. To grow so large and so loud, to tap into enough power to manifest in the physical world, however brief and insubstantially, this one must have been feeding on an incredible amount of unchecked fear and guilt. Had that really come from her?

His legs shook as he walked the last few steps and dropped to his knees beside his partner, who had not moved. He reached out to grab her shoulder. "Agent Vodello," he said urgently. Distant sounds were beginning to drift over from the training compound. Between the scream and the noise from his uncontrolled attack – a few of the nearby trees were now splintered and smoking – their presence had obviously been noticed. He gave her a slight shake. "Milla!"

Her head snapped up, eyes flying open, and she looked around wildly. "What is…" Her eyes lit on Sasha, and she grasped his arm. "The children! Sasha, they're hurting the children!"

He frowned. "You saw something?" he asked. Sasha had noticed nothing overtly suspicious, but her position was closer than his own, so she would have had a better chance of detecting if anything was amiss.

"Yes, I could feel something wrong from inside, so I moved closer, and –" She shook her head. "Oh Sasha, we have to stop them!"

He stood up and pulled her to her feet beside him. "We will," he promised, "but right now we have to move. Listen." He pointed toward the compound, where the noise was getting louder and shouted conversations could now be plainly heard.

She bit her lip, clearly reluctant, but nodded. "Yes," she agreed. "We must report what we know."

In the jet safely after extraction, Sasha watched while Agent Vodello – no, he supposed it should be Milla at this point – gave her careful report of what she had observed. She was entirely collected and professional now, though he could tell she was only clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. The senior agents politely ignored this; they'd probably seen far worse reactions after a mission gone astray.

Sasha was not listening to her words very closely. Instead, he was beginning to put the pieces together: fire and children suffering and a Nightmare spewing blame within her head. He stared down at the floor and waited for Milla to finish her report. When the other agents had thanked her and moved on and they were alone, he cleared his throat. "The factory was a place where I worked, after I left home," he said, keeping his voice carefully even. "I lost control and destroyed half the building, hurting several people. I thought I would be put in prison or worse, but Agent Cruller found me there and recruited me into the Psychonauts instead."

From the corner of his eye, he could see Milla staring as he spoke, her mouth open slightly in surprise. When he was finished, the silence hung for several moments, before she smiled weakly in understanding and took a deep breath. "It was the orphanage that caught fire, where I took care of the children. It happened so fast, and I was away when it started. There was nothing I could do, but when I got there…" She clenched her eyes shut, gave her head a sharp shake. "Sasha, I could hear them," she said in a quivering voice. "I could hear the children screaming. I felt the fire like I was burning with them."

She stopped there, head down and hands clasped tightly together again, and slowly and tentatively, Sasha reached out to touch her shoulder. She looked up and offered him a small smile, genuine if shaky, and then let out a sigh. "I'm sorry. I thought I would be okay with this. I didn't know the Nightmares could…interfere like that. Maybe I should not go on any other missions for a while."

Sasha shook his head quickly. The thought of going back into the field with any other partner was suddenly deeply unappealing. "We completed our objective," he told her, "and you were hardly the only one to cause a disturbance." She had drawn attention, certainly, but his destructive, wild firing hadn't exactly improved the situation. It seemed they both had issues to get under control, and he couldn't help but feel they would have better luck with that together. He cleared his throat. "Of course, if you are uncomfortable or unhappy, then you should do what you must, but…I would like to keep working, if you are willing."

She regarded him curiously. "With me, you mean?"

He pulled his hand back from her shoulder and fiddled with the sleeve of his jacket. "Yes," he said, "…if you're willing."

Milla laughed softly. "Okay," she agreed with a smile. "I can be willing if you are."

* * *

Milla was already in their shared office, levitating casually in the center of the room and flipping through a case file, by the time Sasha got in, a good twenty minute later than he had intended. She looked up at him as he entered and grinned. "Good morning, darling. Late start today?"

He grunted wordlessly and took a large gulp of his coffee before moving to sit down heavily in his chair. He sighed at the stack of paperwork and interoffice memos that had somehow accumulated since he'd been in the previous night and started straightening them into more even piles.

Milla hovered over to him and perched herself on the corner of his desk, mindful of his organization in process. "Have you heard they're planning to reopen the Whispering Rock site?" she asked, placing the relevant file in front of him.

He stopped fussing with his papers and frowned as he opened the folder. "I thought they decided the psitanium deposits made the prisoners too erratic for safe holding."

"It isn't going to be for prisoners this time. It's going to be a new training facility for the young ones." She waved her hand, flipping a few pages ahead for him. "Morceau has this idea for a summer camp program. He's already written a pamphlet."

Sasha snorted. Morry's particular brand of education did not seem to mesh well with what he knew of summer camps. "And what does Truman think of this?"

She grinned again. "He seems very enthusiastic. His little girl is at that age, you know? I'm sure she is quite the handful at home." She leaned forward. "Anyway, I was thinking you and I should volunteer to teach between missions."

"Why would we want to do that?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Because it's a good cause, and Whispering Rock has a lot of good space. You always wanted a place to do your experiments, and I'm sure there would be time for them between lessons." She glanced at the open door into the hallway and dropped her voice to add, "And I wondered if we could maybe have Agent Cruller come with us…"

Sasha looked up in surprise. Though he and Milla still held hope for their old mentor, the higher-ups had written Cruller off as a lost cause long ago, and they still struggled to find some place safely out of the public eye to put him. Concentrated psitanium was sometimes known to have restorative properties in a psychic mind, and if they could convince headquarters that the mad old man could have some use at the camp… "That might work," he mumbled, rubbing his chin.

"Of course it will, darling. I always have wonderful ideas." She hopped off the desk and reached to take the file back.

Sasha kept his hand on top of it. "You're sure you would want to do this, though? Teach young psychics?"

"Yes," she said with a serene smile. "I think it would be nice to work with children again."

He nodded and let go of the file. "All right. Then we'll volunteer."

She beamed at him and half floated out the door with the file, and Sasha shook his head fondly as she went. Truman was unlikely to turn down a direct request from them, especially if it was presented with Milla's usual enthusiasm, so this was essentially a done deal. It wasn't his preferred way to spend his downtime, but if Milla had no issues with the setting and there was a possibility of helping Cruller, he was more than willing to dedicate some time to it. Besides, they'd personally faced down terrorists and international crime syndicates, how much trouble could a summer camp possibly be?

Sasha pushed his files and memos aside and grabbed a clean sheet of paper to begin sketching out ideas for his new lab.


End file.
